Read Portraits and Observations for Free Online Page A

satisfying; it was nice to know that at least someone was living the way a famous actress should. At the door we were met by a red-faced, overly nourished child with a gooey pink ribbon trailing from her hair. “Mummy thinks I should entertain you till she comes down,” she said apathetically, then led us into a large and, now that I think about it, preposterous room: it looked as though some rich old rascal had personally decorated himself a lavish hideaway: sly, low-slung couches, piles of lecherous velvet pillows and lamps with sinuous, undulating shapes. “Would you like to see Mummy’s things?” said the little girl.
    Her first exhibit was an illuminated bibelot cabinet. “This,” she said, pointing to a bit of Chinese porcelain, “is Mummy’s ancient vase she paid Gump’s three thousand dollars for. And that’s her gold cocktail shaker and gold cups. I forget how much they cost, an awful lot, maybe five thousand dollars. And you see that old teapot? You wouldn’t believe what it’s worth …”
    It was a monstrous recital, and toward the end of it, Nora, looking dazedly round the room for a change of topic, said, “Such lovely flowers. Are they from your own garden?”
    “Heavens, no,” replied the little girl disdainfully. “Mummy orders them every day from the most expensive florist in Beverly Hills.”
    “Oh?” said Nora, wincing. “And what is your favorite flower?”
    “Orchids.”
    “Now really. I don’t believe orchids could be your favorite flower. A little girl like you.”
    She thought a moment. “Well, as a matter of fact, they aren’t. But Mummy says they are the most expensive.”
    Just then there was a rustling at the door; Miss C. skipped like a schoolgirl across the room: her famous face was without make-up; hairpins dangled loosely. She was wearing a very ordinary flannel housecoat. “Nora, darling,” she called, her arms outstretched, “do forgive my being so long. I’ve been upstairs making the beds.”
    Yesterday, feeling greedy, I remembered ravishing displays of fruit outside a large emporium I’d driven admiringly past a number of times. Mammoth oranges, grapes big as ping-pong balls, apples piled in rosy pyramids. There is a sleight of hand about distances here, nothing is so near as you supposed, and it is not unusual to travel ten miles for a package of cigarettes. It was a two-mile walk before I even caught sight of the fruit store. The long counters were tilted so that from quite far away you could see the splendid wares, apples, pears. I reached for one of these extraordinary apples, but it seemed to be glued into its case. A salesgirl giggled. “Plaster,” she said, and I laughed too, a little feverishly perhaps, then wearily followed her into the deeper regions of the store, where I bought six small, rather mealy apples, and six small, rather mealy pears.

    It is Christmas week. And it is evening now a long time. Below the window a lake of light bulbs electrifies the valley. From the haunting impermanence of their hilltop homes impermanent eyes are watching them, almost as if suddenly they might go out, like candles at last consumed.
    Earlier today I took a bus all the way from Beverly Hills into downtown Los Angeles. The streets are strung with garlands, we passed a motorized sleigh that was spinning along spilling a wake of white cornflakes, at corners sweating woolly men rustle bells under the shade of prefabricated trees; carols, hurled from lamppost loudspeakers, pour their syrup on the air, and tinsel, twinkling in twenty-four-karat sunshine, hangs everywhere like swamp moss. It could not be more Christmas, or less so. I once knew a woman who imported a pink villa stone by stone from Italy and had it reconstructed on a demure Connecticut meadow: Christmas is as out of place in Hollywood as the villa was in Connecticut. And what is Christmas without children, on whom so much of the point depends? Last week I met a man who concluded a set of observations